Walking into a Gaming Time Capsule at the Nintendo Museum

Video games have come a long way since the 1950s and have made a mark not only for gaming enthusiasts who have grown up with it but also in mainstream entertainment. While we enjoy the advancements made in games, we sometimes find ourselves trying to look back in different ways: redesigns of new consoles with previous generation designs, rereleases of retro games, and, yes, a museum to showcase the company’s gaming history.

Let’s visit the Nintendo Museum together

For that last bit, I’m talking about the newly-opened Nintendo Museum. Nintendo is not just one of the largest gaming companies in the world. Boasting 135 years of history, the brand is almost synonymous with childhood nostalgia for most, if not all, gamers who’ve been part of the working class for at least the last decade. It makes sense that they opened a physical museum last October for fans to reminisce in and for their kids to enjoy. Nostalgia aside, it’s great to look back at how things started, and luckily, my husband and I got to visit the museum early this month.

Purchasing a ticket

Like everyone else, we had to purchase a ticket online before my trip to Japan. You can get a Nintendo Museum ticket in two ways: getting selected from a raffle draw for eligibility to buy a ticket during the month of your visit or buying the ticket after the raffle draw with the hopes that there are still more slots while you’re there. Both ways require you to purchase two months ahead of the trip. Of course, you’d want to have first dibs on when and what time you’ll be visiting, so signing up for the raffle draw with your Nintendo account is the way to go.

The site would email if you got picked out – in my case, I was lucky that I did. From there, it was just a matter of picking out the date and time of my visit to the Nintendo Museum. Otherwise, you’d have to do the next step: buy the ticket after the raffle and pick out whatever date and time still has slots. Admittedly, I don’t know how lucky we were or how difficult it would be to pick a timeslot if you don’t get picked in the raffle. Your best bet would be to go to the website as early as you can.

Getting inside

One thing to note about getting to the Nintendo Museum is that you’ll need to take the train, the closest station being Ogura station on the Kintetsu Railway Kyoto line, and walk. The official site says they don’t provide a parking area for vehicles, including bicycles (except for those with accessibility needs). They also don’t recommend taking a taxi. Don’t worry about getting lost; once I got to Ogura station, there were signs on what exit to take to get to the museum.

When I got within reach of the Nintendo Museum, I noticed that the façade looked specifically like a Nintendo office building. The guards of the building also checked my ticket first before they let me set foot in the area. It’s all standard stuff, but once I lined up, that feeling of blandness faded with the sound of 8-bit music from Super Mario Bros. I was also handed a personalized ticket (you can swap Mario’s photo out with your Mii photo) that doubles as a souvenir. After getting through, I took some photos with the pipes and blocks similar to those found in the Super Nintendo World section in Universal Studio Japan.

Also interesting: The Museum of Endangered Sounds Takes You Back in Time

The Nintendo Museum’s main building has five Toads that, when patting their heads, sing. Of course, I spent a minute doing this before getting into the main lobby with walls decorated with all kinds of merch. There are three sections to choose from: the exhibit and interactive sections, the hanafuda (or “flower cards,” a type of Japanese playing cards) workshop, and the Bonus Stage. I didn’t get into the workshop where you create your own set of hanafuda and learn how to play the game. So, I’ll only talk about the main sections and the Bonus Stage.

Stepping into Nintendo’s history

The Nintendo Museum’s main event is, of course, its exhibit, which is one big room that showcases items that tell the company’s history. Although the middle portion is largely empty, its walls chronicle how the company started, while the nearby shelves are curated by console generation. The museum has also been updated since recent games like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom are already on display.

Not only do you see how the games evolved, but you can also appreciate what the company was before getting into video games. For example, I didn’t know that the company started off as a manufacturer of hanafuda, hence the workshop in the museum. They also ventured into other things like batting toys and a love tester before finally getting into video games. Some of the most interesting things I saw in the Nintendo Museum’s exhibit include a room full of console prototypes and panels of screens showing how game franchises like Metroid and Mario changed over console generation.

Choosing the games

The next room is the interactive section of the Nintendo Museum. There are eight types of games to play for free. The catch? You can’t play them all. Each ticket has 10 coins for playing in the interactive section. However, the cost of each game varies, ranging from one to four coins per play. You’ll have to strategize what game you want to play to maximize your coins. And no, you can’t purchase more. You also get your photos taken while playing and can access them later on.

Here are the games you can expect:

• Zapper and Scope (4 coins): This is a shooting game involving multiple players. You can pick either a handgun or a bazooka as your weapon to shoot enemies. At the end of the game, the top three shooters will be revealed. No prize, though, just bragging rights.
• Shigureden (2 coins): An uta-karuta (or “poetry cards”) game that requires knowledge of the Hyakunin Isshu poems. There’s a huge interactive floor in this area where the players would listen to the poem being read out before identifying the corresponding card and stepping on it.
• Ultra Machine (2 coins): A simple batting game with rows of different rooms to choose from. If you pick a room with a TV screen and hit it during your batting session, it will turn the TV on.
• Big Controller (2 coins): This involves using a giant controller. Two players are needed to wield most of the giant controllers. Each controller represents a gaming console and has different games in store. It’s all a matter of teamwork to get through the challenges.
• Love Tester (2 coins): Two participants will need to hold hands while holding a ball in each of their free hands. From here, a screen, much like a photo printing booth, will give instructions to test how much love the players have for each other.
• Nintendo Classics (1 coin): Players can choose single-player classic games with the NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64. Each controller has its own game in store.
• Ultra Hand (1 coin): Using an extendable hand, players would need to grab balls and drop them into the pipes in front of them.
• Game and Watch (1 coin): This single-player game makes use of the player’s shadow to interact with the screen and overcome obstacles.

Time to lose some coins

After playing, it was time to go to the souvenir store aptly called the Bonus Stage, where we happily emptied our wallets in exchange for merch. Normally, this section comes in last, but you can hop right into it once you get inside the Nintendo Museum even before getting into the exhibit and interactive sections. Unfortunately, this isn’t what we did, so by the time we got in the shop, some of the merch I wanted to get was out of stock.

Sold-out items during my visit were the giant plushies shaped like Nintendo controllers from previous generations. You can imagine that the N64 controller would be the last to get sold out because it’ll be hard to fit in luggage. Otherwise, if you’re aiming for a Family Computer, NES, SNES, or Wii pillow, you better buy it first.

Before you go: ‘GAMM’ Game Museum Opens in Rome, Reviving Gaming History

Other stuff you can find ranges from the usual t-shirts, plushies, pens, and pins to the more unique ones like a Mario memo pad with a casing shaped like a Family Computer cartridge and hanafuda with unique Mario designs. There are also some Nintendo Museum-specific merch to commemorate the visit. While the items are definitely on the pricey side, you can only find some of these in the store. They also don’t ship items, and there is no online store where you can order items.

Going back to the real world

Personally speaking, we spent a good 3 hours in the Nintendo Museum, the majority spent in the exhibit and store. There’s another building for the Hatena Burger café, which would’ve been perfect for lunch since the place is also Nintendo-themed. We expected the food to be the same, but since it wasn’t, we opted to pass. Otherwise, it was definitely worth going to the museum, and I’d recommend it to any gaming fan to experience it at least once. As for me, if I ever go back a second time, I’d go straight into the Bonus Stage to get myself an SNES controller plush.

YouTube: Nintendo Museum Direct

Photo credits: All media have been taken by the author for TechAcute.